Quote from: 556j on September 05, 2012, 01:06:47 AM

What if the extreme risk is bitcoin itself, but the debit is denominated in bitcoin?

There is risk in the volatility of bitcoin's value and the possibility that bitcoins will become all but worthless overnight and never recover. We can disagree over just how much risk there is, but there's no question it's there. This puts a bit of a drag on everything we do with bitcoins. Fortunately, there's so much friction in the traditional financial system that this doesn't actually hurt bitcoins very much. But we do need better ways to hedge these risks. There are definitely ways today that don't require paying huge fees to get no leverage. But they could be a lot better and that would help a lot.

Denominating debts in bitcoin makes the debtor short bitcoins and the borrower long bitcoins. Debts could be a sensible way to speculate on bitcoins if the market wasn't so messed up by fraud. Ironically, it would probably actually help bitcoins if the borrowing market were heavily regulated. (Of course, it's unimaginable that you could get beneficial regulation in the borrowing market without also having horribly harmful regulation in every other aspect. So I'm not suggesting that's a workable solution.)